ArtShowCentral.com

Art is an important part of life. Through art one can communicate thoughts, ideas, fears, anxieties, beliefs and much more. … com) Although art is a useful tool of expression, many children do not utilize it. A lot of children believe that “they arent good at art” or “cant do it.” These views prevent them from experiencing art as a therapeutic escape or outlet from the frustrations and troubles of life.

Many people use art as a way to express themselves with mediums such as song, poetry, painting, photography etc. … In Laylahs “Greenhead” series she uses simple comic book art to “take on the social injustice of politics, human nature and war.” (Art Voice) Using her work as a standpoint many valuable lessons about art and expression could be taught. “We all know that art is not truth. Art is a reality that makes us realize the truth. … , 489) A child in this stage is able to deal with abstract thoughts, which are important when viewing and discussing art. Sixth graders are also at a changing point in their lives and are often faced with anxieties that could be expressed through art.

Never before have I encountered more intriguing works of art than those done by Andy Warhol. … Andy might just be the most interesting and, at the same time, the most confusing individual you will ever read about. Andy’s work, like his life, is like none other’s. … Andy’s father, Ondrej Wharhola, is best described as a bald, burly man with a bulging belly and massive upper arms, pudgy nose and bristling sideburns. … (Bekris 6) He was married and living with Julia Warhola, mother of Andy, for three years in Mikova. … (Bekris 9)

Andy Warhol was born on September 28, 1930 in Forest City, Pennsylvania, or so we think. This is what the original birth certificate read, however Andy wanted people to believe he was born in McKeesport, or even Hawaii. … Andy was raised in a coal mining town in Philadelphia. … This might explain Andy’s later fascination with death-related topics. In 1930, Andy’s father got a steady job laying roads and moving houses. … The rent was six dollars a week and Andy’s father had to work odd jobs to barley pay the rent. It was not just Andy and his parents, he had two other brothers, one older and one younger. … ” (Bekris 12)

Andy always had a problem with grammar school. … As most children do, they saw this in Andy and picked on him frequently. (Bekris 18) Andy’s brother Paul stated, “At age four Andy cried a lot at school and one day a little black girl slapped him” (Bekris 15) He was very traumatized by this incident and asked his mother if she could keep him home from school. As the loving mother she was, she took Andy out of school and kept him home for two years. … It took his mother, brother and neighbor to drag Andy back to school. … In this town Andy made new friends, which were particularly girls. This would later explain Andy’s homosexual tendencies. … She was said to be bright and stimulating which would encourage Andy to do better in school. Andy began to have a fascination with the cinema. … Andy would end up using these same images in his prints. Andy started to distance himself from boys and became closer to girls and his new found talent of drawing. Andy’s brother John said, ” When Andy was out in the field by the time you hit the ball he wasn’t there. … Andy soon got the reputation as a “mamas boy”. … At age six Andy had entered the second grade. His teacher Catharine Meta said that Andy would walk through the halls with his head down wishing he was invisible. …

From early on in Andy’s life he had been a sickly child. Because Andy was known to be a mammas boy and a crybaby his parents paid little to no attention to him when he whined about being hurt or sick. At age two Andy’s eyes swelled shut due to an infection and his mother had to use daily doses of boric acid to get rid of the mucus. … At age six Andy contracted scarlet fever, which would later effect his overall development. His illness went unnoticed until Andy began not being able to control his limbs or speech. … This part of Andy’s life greatly contributed to his mistrust in people and his art. (Bekris 19)

Andy’s art talent in High School was amazing. … ” Andy attended Scheley High School. … Andy was accepted to both but chose to attend Carnegie Tech. … Andy’s freshman courses consisted of drawing, pictorial and decorative design, color, hygiene, and thought and expression. Andy had a great struggle with all of his courses, but thought and expression was by far his worst. This was probably because of Andy’s phobia of expressing himself orally. Andy was a man of few words; another reason was because he had such poor grammar. Fortunately, Andy made two friends in this class who tried to get Andy a passing grade. …

At the time Andy was attending school, there was an economic depression, and the war was ending. … Andy was one of them. Because Andy showed such passion to his work his teachers fought to have Andy attend Summer school and go for re-admissions the following year. (Feldman, 9) While Andy was attending Summer school he got a job delivering fruit with his brother. … ” When Andy returned for re-admissions he presented the sketchbook. They allowed Andy back in. Along with being able to come back to Carnegie Tech, his sketches were put on display and Andy received forty dollars.

One of my favorite things to do in my spare time is build websites. Sounds a bit strange doesn’t it? Well, actually NO, because when you need a website for a client you will have one ready or you can sell you site as a template online. There are a few key things to know about building good sites. Many of my clients always want something that looks “Cool”, but when functionality suffers this is not good. You want a site that can function on the front end and that is easy to use on the backend. Think about who will see your site, and how they will use it. What will they see, what will keep them there? Here is a quick list of items to think about when designing your site.

• Do your colors coordinate and are they visually appealing, not discrating?
• Do your links look like links or regular text, will your visitor know to “click”?
• Is your logo in the upper left corner? If not, put it there!
• Is you navigation easy to use or does it have confusing sublinks that go to more sublinks.
• Do you have a site map, in the event the site is huge and your customers want to find something?
• If you have a large content site, do you have a search feature with options?
• Are your fonts and font colors easy to read?
• Do you have a newsletter signup form? If so, is it in a very accessible place on your site.
• Do you have broken links on your site?
• Are your pages too busy and loaded with too much content?
• Have you taken the time to create nice page layout?
• Do you have more graphics than text on your site? If so, this is not good for SEO!
• Do your site visitors navigate deeper into your site or do they run after the first page.
• Does your site communicate your product or service, is there consistancy?
• Does your site look the same in most browsers? If not it needs better optimization.
• If you are selling a product do you have clear links to your privacy policies and other important legal data?
• Is your contact information easy to access or do your site visitors have to hunt for it?

So, here I am writing my second post ever. I really like the topic of hosting because it seems like the first battle of anyone who wants to get a site going. There are many things to consider when choosing a hosting company, but there are a few extremely important things to consider. In the business of web marketing and the internet in general, web-hosting is the first thing that all my clients ask about. There are a ton of hosting companies out there, but choosing the good ones really makes all the difference.

Of course at first glance you want to look at pricing, this is actually mistake #1 Would you really want to pay $3.99 a month for webhosting that didn’t have good tech support and no services? $3.99 per month for a whole year adds up to about $50.00 a year. Now I know that is not a ton, but really, do you want to waste $50.00 a year on crappy service and bad hosting…NO! You could spend $50 bucks setting up your first Adwords campaign or some other affiliate-like program.

Mistake #2 is not doing the research and just signing up for some hosting company you found on the internet that looks good. With all the news services out there like Digg.com
or Yelp.com there is no reason why you shouldn’t do your homework. Didn’t your Mother tell you it’s important to do your homework to get good grades in school? All I can say is research, research, research!! Notice I wrote that three times, that’s because the third time is a charm and it will stick in your brain.

When researching a hosting company always look at features! Features, features, features! Whatever you do you want to make your life easy. What is the point of having hosting and then spending more money to hire some developer at $40-50 per hour to build you custom programs? Or would you want to setup hosting, not know how to build a website and then hire a designer for $75 per hour to build it for you? These choices are not sounding so good are they? Well, you don’t have to do either because with internet technology today, there are many dummy proof ways to go…no insult!

Don’t worry here is the definition of dummy by www.dictionary.com:
Dummy: up Slang
To keep silence; clam up.

Mistake #3 is setting up a web-host and not having a site or content. I see this one all the time and seems the most common. Clients call me telling me that they have a hosting setup ……..

Sorry I just got distracted, my wife brought me Ice cream with banana’s and chocolate…yummmy!

Okay, back on track!……so clients come to me with an idea and tel me they already setup hosting. Many times I find that they have chosen portly and gotten screwed with how much they are paying. First of all get your ideas together, Second map it out on paper, and finally get your photos and content together. Hosting has no purpose if you don’t have a site. Having a site does not matter if you have no content, so don’t rush it!

Okay now on to the Good Stuff! When looking for a hosting company, here is the main question you want to ask yourself, “What do I get for my money?”

1. Is there good tech support?
2. Is there good sales support?
3. Do they have good features that are easy to use?
4. Am I getting what I am paying for?
5. Will my site ever go down?
6. Are there built in templates and site builders?
7. Is the control panel easy to navigate?
8. Is it easy to setup email addresses?
9. What are the limitation of the service? (eg. Bandwidth and Web Space)
10. Is the service going to expand with your expanding business?

These kind of questions are extremely important to ask yourself during the process of any online purchase of web hosting! Here are a few hosting companies to check out:

1. www.powweb.com
   • Check out these 10 reasons why powweb is awesome!
2. www.1and1.com
   
   • From convenient Instant Domain packages to all-inclusive Shared Hosting plans, powerful Dedicated Servers and ready-to-run eShops, 1&1 offers a complete range of web services for every need, every skill level and every budget. All 1&1 products have been designed to provide the ideal combination of features and affordability, with no pricing gimmicks or hidden costs. You simply won’t find a better value for your money!
3. www.ipowerweb.com
   • IPOWER, Inc., founded in October 2001, provides web hosting and web services for small- and medium-sized businesses worldwide looking to build, manage, promote and profit from an online presence. The company, which offers domain registration, web site hosting, e-commerce tools, merchant services, application hosting, online marketing…read more…
     
4. www.ixwebhosting.com
   • Since 2003, IX Web Hosting is an AWARD WINNING company, with recognition being earned by dozens of organizations for the performance of its products, its guarantees, feature-rich plans and much more. read more…

Hopefully you can choose one of those hosting companies to get started, they all have good service, support and good features! Personally, I like the hosting that also has Affiliate Programs! Why? I’ll tell you why! If you love the service, why not resell it! Everyone has a friend, family member or a Co-Worker that needs a web-site at some point in their life right?
I signed up for Powweb.com and two days later a friend called me asking to setup a site. I joined their affiliate program, signed up my friend and instantly got $77.77 back in my pocket! How cool is that! And then I created a portfolio for my wife through Powweb.com, I got another $77.77 and then setup a website for a company I am working for and got another $77.77. So I basically made $233 cash in less than two weeks. Not a bad start, and there are affiliate programs out there that pay even more than that.

Enough said about hosting, so hopefully this information has helped you get a head-start on hosting. Remember to find a service that works for you and that can benefit you in some way. Take it slow and find the right hosting solution. Never jump into getting a website host until you have your product or service ready with photos and content. Research the market a bit to see if you will need to hire a designer or a programmer to help you out. With many hosting companies these days, they have built in design applications that assist in designing your own site. Setting up a hosting account and website should be easy , so make sure you have good tech support 24/7 and you’ll feel more secure. More importantly, don’t put yourself on a tight budget and find some “cheapy cookie cutter” hosting that doesn’t offer great service. There are too many reliable hosting companies out there, so don’t get stuck with a “lemon.” Okay, well off you go, and good luck.

I’ll see you next week with “TIPS on Building an Awesome Website!”

How to Draw Eyes

Most people have difficulty with eyes. Here is a great little video on drawing eyes. See how the large shapes are focused on ignoring the detail. The details are put in last. Great technique

Drawing Another Head Pt 1

This is a great video of a head being drawn step-by-step. Its done digitally with a pen mouse.
Awesome from beginning to end.

How to draw a dog

Here is an interesting video of a cartoon dog being drawn step-by-step.